By stopping a serial killer, two California pressmen show what it means to be heroic

The media gets endlessly harangued throughout the U.S., whether it’s Fox News or the N.Y. Times. People involved in the media get stamped as political opportunists, communists, fascists or any number of things.

Like anything else, such blanket criticisms are erroneous. People involved in the media are people just like anyone else. And sometimes, those people can be heroes.

Take for instance Joe Iskandar and Rey Bantug, pressman with the Victorville Daily Press – where this blogger once worked as a copy editor.

When Iskander and Bantug recently heard the screams of a woman at a nearby restaurant in the High Desert, Southern California town of Victorville, they didn’t think twice and charged to help. The woman was trying to fight off a man who was attempting to steal her car, if not do worse to her. Iskander and Bantug stopped the man and held him under a citizen’s arrest until San Bernardino County Sheriff’s deputies arrived on the scene.

Only afterward did they find out the man they stopped was suspected serial killer and rapist, John Wayne Thomson.

“To be honest, me and Rey have both probably had better fights in a bar than what this guy put up,” Iskandar said. “We thought we were just helping one person out, but it turns out it was a lot bigger than that. We didn’t ask for the publicity, we’re happier that we may have saved another victim and that the victims’ families are a little more at ease.”

In a nation where divisiveness is often the law of the land, it’s nice to see that when it comes down to it, there are still plenty of people out there willing to put their lives on the line for a complete stranger.

As someone who knows the area, and was once employed by the same newspaper, may I just say: Well done, men.